David Brackin is the managing director of Stuff U Sell, the leading eBay trading assistant in the UK and a regular Tamebay contributor. This week he shares why you may be interested in eBay Concierge as a benefit of the Anchor Shop subscription:
eBay Concierge
In the latest price changes announced earlier this year, something was slipped into the eBay Anchor Shop package which to any seller who noticed it made it amazingly good value despite the price increase. The Concierge programme has existed for a while on eBay but this was the first time that seller could elect to join in by upgrading their shop subscription, and if you are the sort of size where you are hovering between shop levels, I think this makes the decision to upgrade an easy and obvious one.
I’ve often said that eBay’s route to success is in building up the world’s widest selection of inventory, and that means making it the best place to sell. The hundreds of little niggles that distract and annoy – both those which are just part and parcel of operating a consumer business, and those which are due to the arcane structures around eBay selling – can prevent sellers from doing what they do best: sourcing and listing inventory on the platform. And eBay really really needs sellers out doing that, as – unlike Amazon – it can’t source its own inventory.
Concierge is very much part of the answer.
A standard call into the Concierge team starts the same way as standard support – hunting around on the site until you find the phone number – but after that it gets much better. You can immediately tell that the cheery Dublin call-centre team aren’t being measured on how long they stay on the call – they are delighted to go through any issues you have as many time as it takes to explain something, and you get a real sense that they have been empowered to do a number of things on their own initiative, so that where standard support might be giving the answer that “I’m sorry the system won’t let me do that”, the concierge agent can agree that the system is giving an odd answer and just get on with fixing it. I prepared to bet that makes it a much more satisfying place to work, and that shows in the level of care you receive.
There are a few things that they can do straight away, but usually they will conference in a specialist – for example a returns specialist if there’s a tricky international returns cases that has gone wrong and needs a more detailed investigation. Importantly the first agent will stay on the call while you deal with the specialist and help put your points across to them, so it really feels like the first person you called is going to stay there and fix your problem, not pass the buck in some endless game of call forwarding you can get in some call centres. If you’ve two or three issues then they will stay through all off the calls and finish off making sure that you’ve understood all the results. And if you need a follow-up in a few days, the same agent will be calling you back to finish off the query.
I tend to save up any issues escalated to me by our customer support team and do them all in a single call once a week or fortnight and I’m routinely impressed at how well we’re able to tick through them all. We don’t always get the result that we’re after – but the team are always polite and clear in explaining how things are.
It’s not by any means perfect – there are still problems around dealing with international customer services and the technical knowledge and responses around new policies are still fairly basic, but I’ve been a professional seller now for nearly fifteen years on eBay and I can safely say that this feels like a massive step towards eBay being a genuine partner with me to solve the problems of selling on eBay, and freeing my time and energy up to worry about how to get more stuff to sell and how to delight our customers.
21 Responses
Concierge has gone downhill since they opened it up to anyone. Before the price increase, you would get same day replies, instant callbacks and the same team member dealing with any issues. Now they can take up to a week to reply, the callbacks can take hours and the cases get passed around the team and in some instances, completely forgotten about. I have an ongoing case that is almost 3 weeks old. I was told my issue was on the list for a response but I am still waiting. This time last year it was a flawless service. I feel that I have paid an extra £100 for a poorer service.
we feel Concierge has been badly affected the quality of service greatly diluted by the anchor shops package
currently emails take 3 days or more to be answered if at all
waiting times are often 30 minutes or more , when you do reach the Dublin guys
they are quite good at every day problems doing their very best,
though with something more technical and unusual they tend to waffle and blag their way out of admitting they dont know the answer
If the current concierge service is
Ebays best
We pity those who only have the regular service
this article seems to be a few months out of date. concierge these days feels like the old ebay customer service days; awful!!!
I’m still waiting for a response from a simple query sent on 7th June. Not as good as it was.
This is the best thing eBay have done in the last 5 years….It’s been a game changer for us.
recently
We emailed concierge about a mundane feedbcak issue,
Received no answer after 4 days
so
Decided to ring
waited an hour then gave up ,
Then decided to ask for a callback
The callback was instant!
Yep instantly putting us in the same que we had just spent the last hour in
I agree with all the critical comments above. It was an excellent service until all anchor shops became eligible. It is now a poor service that does not do what it says on the tin! (and we get charged extra for it!!)
I would never pay for a concierge / anchor shop, it costs a fortune and Ebay just rips you off by hiding listings whenever they fee like it. Sure even promoted / markdown listings details are shown at the very bottom of each listing. Also look at the travesty they made with Ebay shops and certain links have been either removed / are broken.
Concierge works well for us. We always use ringback and find it quick. We use the service often enough , I would estimate three times a week, to be surprised at some of the problems mentioned above. Maybe eBay prioritise customers within the concierge system ?
Terrible !!!! Waiting times have gone crazy… Sat listing to the same song over and over again. You will be mine, you bring the sunshine and ill bring the wine.
currently waiting for a response never mind a resolution to an email sent 4 days ago
also still waiting for a promise to call on monday morning , to check if an on going issue had been resolved
Well the concierge money grab is working well for eBay, not so much customer service but a customer service charge.
Still the award of concierge as a prize in the business awards thing will be a great asset to the winners,
learning to solve problems without relying on ebay
I used to get through to top rated seller but lost access to this whwhen they introduced concierge so now get through to phillipines. Its used to be quite bad though in last year or so it has improved greatly and their English normally is very good. Waiting times for calling and call back are often just couple of mins to 5-10 mins. They do tend to repeat what you say so they understand however my call have not been of technical nature just removing defects and closing cases etc.
Wonder if it will get worse now ebay laid off 1% of their workforce yesterday!!!!!!!